<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Shatter by Dally_boi</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22872154">Shatter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dally_boi/pseuds/Dally_boi'>Dally_boi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-typical distortion confusion, Dissociation, It's not explicit though, Mild Blood, Spoilers for MAG 101, Stream of Consciousness, drabble(ish)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:47:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>428</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22872154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dally_boi/pseuds/Dally_boi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael Shelley finds his way to losing himself. It's far from painless.</p><p>Or: Michael Shelley follows Gertrude's map through the Distortion. It's about as pleasant as you'd expect.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shatter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just a short, kind of experimental introspective fic about Michael Shelley's path into becoming Michael, because what better way is there to deal with dissociating than writing about it? Hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It starts with a door.</p><p>Creaking open, too warm air on his back as he looks to eyes he thought were kind. The world swirls, tilts and sways in that impossible construction of clay and doors and fractals- to him, but the calm in her eyes tells another story. Steel meets his panic.<br/>
Paper crinkles under his hands as they grip something that wasn’t there before. Michael Shelley doesn’t remember stepping through the pale yellow door, doesn’t remember laying a hand on the dark, matte handle, but the world’s shifted into too-bright walls, echoed and echoed and echoed in mirrored twists, leading off into nowhere. Into everywhere. The black rug’s thick under his feet over the old, worn down carpet. Yellow, like the door. His feet walk, his eyes trace the lines (are they lines?) of a nonsense map. The carpet is blue, solid. The wallpaper spirals lazily on the edges of his vision as the page tells him to walk through a mirror. And he trusts her- even now, he clings to his trust like he clings to the map, his lifeline. Because she wouldn’t be doing this without a reason. His shirt clings to him, too, in the heat of the place, and the mirror breaks. The red dripping down his hand as he steps through feels like the air.<br/>
The carpet’s red, the walls are blue, his head is spinning as he places one foot in front of the other. Impossibly, he’s placing one foot in front of the other. One, two, one, two, but the numbers twist into sounds, into hitches of breath that can’t be his, because he can’t feel them. The liquid red stands out against the pale, sickly green of the wall when a hand drags along it for support. When (Michael?) looks in the mirror, he sees familiar blond hair hanging loose in its ponytail and frightened, reddened eyes. Someone crying in a body he’s not inside of, not now. It pulls the frame away from the wall with ease, and another path twists slowly off into the distant hallway.</p><p> </p><p>It ends with a door.</p><p>And with a lost young man, turning paper to pulp in soaked hands, shaking as fingers that might be his touch old, faded wood. It’s warm, he thinks. Like the hallway. Like the island. Like the hand-prints streaked against the grain of shifting-patterned wallpaper, lining the trap he’s caught in. He tries to remember her face, but all he sees are kindly eyes. Kindly lies.<br/>
This door’s quiet, when it opens. And Michael Shelley shatters.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I haven't done much stream of consciousness, so I hope I did alright! If you enjoyed it, leave kudos or a comment! Criticism's more than welcome too.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>